Lambing season just finished, and you can still hear exhaustion in Josh Emerman’s voice. This spring at Moorit Hill Farm & Fiber, 22 Icelandic ewes successfully delivered 38 lambs this spring. “Everybody’s healthy,” Emerman said. “Lambing season, for us, is a lot of sleepless nights.”

Emerman and Elizabeth Goundie raise Icelandic sheep, a hardy, double-coated breed little changed since Vikings imported the spirited sheep to Iceland a millennia ago. After years of tending the flock, the pair added a fiber mill to their Troy, Maine, operation in 2022.

Together, the farm and the mill eat a lot of energy. “Our electricity costs for the last few years have been creeping up pretty steadily,” Emerman said. “We decided to start looking into the costs of solar, just to see what the tipping point was.”

In February, Emerman and Goundie installed a nearly 41-kilowatt roof-mounted solar system, scaled to cover the energy costs of their home, farm and mill. Federal funding through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) paid for half of the project. “The REAP program made switching to alternative energy feasible and cost-effective,” Emerman said.

With their solar array installed and lambing and spring shearing complete, Emerman is hoping to continue clearing land to expand their herd. “We figure we don’t want to have any more than 100 sheep on the farm, based on how much land we have and being able to manage the individual sheep,” he said. “It’s very hands-on and personal.”

Moorit Hill received a $69,450 grant toward the 70 panels that now cover the roof of one of their barns. Solar Logix of Belfast, Maine installed the solar array, which is tied to the grid and produces credits on the farm’s electric bill.

“Last month, we produced more than we used,” Emerman said. “We had a really sunny February, so we basically didn’t pay for any electricity through the power company. We just paid our loan.”

The other half of the project was financed by a low-interest loan from Coastal Enterprises Incorporated (CEI), a nonprofit financial institution. CEI brought the interest rate on the remaining $69,450 cost from about 7% to less than 3%.

“Because the grant covered half of it, our lender was able to give us a loan with just the array as collateral,” Emerman said. Moorit Hill received a 15-year loan amortized over seven years, with a balloon payment at the end.

Long after the loan is paid, the solar panels will continue to convert the sun’s energy into power. “The array should have a useful life of 40 years,” Emerman said. The parts are warrantied for 25 years at 85%  production capacity.

Before starting Moorit Hill in 2017, Emerman and Goundie went to college in Maine and attended graduate school in Vancouver, B.C. They moved back to Maine and “started going to every livestock or farming-related event,” Emerman said.

The fiber mill now makes up a majority of their business. The mill can process fiber in small batches that larger mills won’t run and can even process the fleece of a single animal. Most Moorit Hill Fiber customers are other small farms in Maine, with some customers farther afield. Moorit Hill also sells lambs and wool products such as hats and yarn.

Emerman and Goundie started Moorit Hill with stewardship in mind, and that goal hasn’t changed. “Everything we do, we try to do with as little impact as we can,” Emerman said. “We try to raise the sheep in a regenerative way.”

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), passed by the 117th Congress and signed by President Joe Biden, is a piece of federal legislation that aims to reduce inflation by lowering the cost of prescription medications, investing in domestic energy production and promoting clean energy, among other objectives.